Al Gore, action star. Go ahead and laugh; the former vice president does, too. But with his new global-warming expos, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore may be the unlikeliest summer movie star since last year's marching penguins.

David Milch, the Emmy award-winning creator of television's NYPD Blue and Deadwood, received the 2,314th star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame on Thursday, three days before the third-season premiere of Deadwood.

Summer series abound. USA TODAY offers a month-by-month sampling (times and days subject to change; some shows premiere on nights or at times different from their usual slots; times ET/PT unless noted):

One of publishing's most bizarre mysteries appears to finally have been solved. The writer penning the novels of JT LeRoy, a purported 25-year-old former male prostitute and drug addict, has been unmasked as a 40-year-old woman who allegedly undertook the ruse to get her work recognized.

Over the first weeks this fall, four second-year series have unexpectedly risen to the top of the TV class establishing themselves as the best shows on TV at the moment. Seldom if ever has a sophomore group achieved so much in tandem.

Deadwood, S.D., a former gold-mining town, sprang up in 1876 and is now the subject of a TV series of the same name. The gold from the mountains is gone, but Deadwood has undergone an economic transformation since 1988, when a statewide vote revived legalized gambling in the town.